It's such an impressive statistic, and yet no one was counting down the points to the achievement.

Last week, when Braham sophomore Rebekah Dahlman reached 2,000 career points – putting her on pace to break the current state record by the time she graduates – she and her coaches were so clueless they actually missed the mark, making an announcement after the moment had come and gone.

"I was shocked," said Dahlman, who went on to score 41 points, tying a school record, in the victory over Duluth East. "I thought I had maybe 300 points left."

For Dahlman, who has grown up in a family of eight – all of whom are deeply involved with basketball – shaking off the credit for what coach Tim Malone called "a heck of a milestone" seems almost natural.

Those watching from the outside could easily focus on the statistics: Dahlman scored 903 points last year, in a season in which Braham (7-0) lost in the state finals to Minnehaha Academy, and she is on track to surpass Tayler Hill's career state record of 3,888 points set two seasons ago.

But to Dahlman, who joined varsity as an eighth-grader, the numbers are merely evidence that she has been lucky enough to play a lot of basketball on a team that meshes as instinctively as a family.

Big family, common thread

The mix of chemistry and skill isn't an accident. Settled on a small farm a few miles east of Braham, where they grow their own food and shun cell phones, TVs and the Internet, the Dahlman family takes the hobby of basketball to a new level – weaving the sport into conversations, life lessons and spare moments.

The tradition in many ways has become the fabric of their family, one that started when Nate, a former Orr High School player and lifelong coach, married his wife, Kathy, the daughter of John Kundla, the former Gophers and Minneapolis Lakers coach and Hall of Famer.

Rebekah's brother Isaiah graduated as Minnesota's all-time scoring leader (a record later broken) before playing at Michigan State, where he currently assists coach Tom Izzo. Brothers Noah and Jonah play NCAA Division I and Division III basketball, respectively. Sister Hannah plays alongside Rebekah on Braham's varsity, and little brother Zach – who as Isaiah puts it "doesn't have a choice" – plays on the freshman team as an eighth-grader.

Some of that family support has directly affected Rebekah's team accomplishments. The top six players for Braham have been playing together since Rebekah was in second grade, when Nate organized a traveling team for her and her friends.

"I don't have a lot of money, but what I can give them is time," the elder Dahlman said. "And it's certainly made them a better team. The matters of trust and familiarity ... those are invaluable."

Always getting better

Calling herself a "gym rat," Dahlman stays late after every practice. She takes her dad's gym keys in the summers and on the weekends and shoots baskets. Her Christmas break is reserved not for escaping the court but for celebrating it. When the whole family gets together for the holidays, they head to the gym and get a spirited game of H.O.R.S.E. going.

"Most of her life is basketball," Isaiah said of his little sister – who fondly calls him her "favorite brother."

As a kid too little to play baseball or basketball with her big brothers, Rebekah would just want to be with them, involved in some way. She pinch-ran in pickup baseball games. She toyed around with dribbling on a makeshift court.

Then, when she got older, Isaiah would make trips back to the farm when he had breaks from school. On the days he was there, the two would spend hours going over fundamentals, strategies and advanced moves, such as the Euro Step – which she executed for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

And despite her early achievements, the inner fire hasn't flickered. Dahlman, who already has six scholarship offers, easily dismisses individual goals because her eyes are on a different prize, one she and her friends have been fantasizing about for seven years, much in the way some little girls mentally construct dream weddings.

"Ever since we were kids, we would always say, when we get to be juniors and seniors, we're going to win state," she said. "We're all on the same page, and this is our year."